Planning Your Path to Glory

Preview battle set up and the Initiative phase in Dust Warfare

Dust Warfarehas many exciting, innovative features that set it apart from other wargames. As you saw in the previous preview, platoons offer a unique way to organize troops and supporting units, allowing you to customize your armies to your playstyle. Today, we’ll look as several more intriguing aspects of Dust Warfare, including campaign scenarios, the Battle Builder, and the Initiative phase.

Generating a Scenario

Select from one of the five tense campaign scenarios and start your battle quickly, or use the original Battle Builder rules and create your own unique scenario.

Fight a one-off battle or string several missions together and create a narrative using the campaign scenarios. Clash in a chaotic Night Engagement where units deploy hidden away from enemy sight, or keep your enemy guessing as to your true motives in a Secret Mission where only you know the objectives of the battle. The campaign scenarios offer a variety of interesting missions that let you and your opponent dive into combat, or even stage a multi-game campaign, building to a climatic conclusion! With the Battle Builder, creating the scenario is a strategic part of the game! Before the game, each player takes turns spending Scenario Points to influence critical game variables. If you wisely invest your points and keep your strategies secret, you could manage to create a scenario that perfectly suits your force. Download the Battle Builder preview (pdf, 213KB), and see how these versatile rules allow you and your opponent to build a unique scenario.

Seizing the initiative

In the Initiative phase, players determine who will go first in the Command and Unit phase and how many Orders each player has for the Command phase. All of this is calculated by counting the number of units in your army and rolling the corresponding number of dice at the start of the Initiative phase. Each player rolls and then shares the results with his opponent. The player who rolled the fewest hits acts first in the Command and Unit phase. In the Command phase, both players can issue as many Orders as hits they rolled. We'll talk in more detail about Orders and the Command phase in the next Dust Warfare preview.

Sometimes it will be vital to your plan to act first in the Command phase. Perhaps you have the opportunity to finish off a bazooka wielding unit before they destroy your Luther, and you’ll only have that chance if you act first in the Command Phase, or maybe you can move an exposed squad into hard cover before they are ripped asunder by the opponent's Grim Reapers. As you can see, there are many reasons you may want to go first in the Command phase. However, ordering units in the Command phase will cost you precious actions in the Unit phase, as performing actions in the Command phase leads to less actions in the Unit phase. Saving your actions for the Unit phase can be a useful strategy as well. Units can perform Sustained Attacks or March Moves in the Unit phase, but only if they did not act in the Command phase. This increase in speed and firepower can be decisive in the midst of a hotly contested battle. On the other hand, the opponent's squads will be able to react to your actions during the Unit phase, so you'll have to carefully orchestrate your attack. We will address the Unit phase and reactions in more detail in an upcoming preview. Dust Warfare offers multiple ways to set up and influence a game with the Battle Builder or you can use campaign scenarios to quickly stage a game…or even an entire series of games. In the Initiative phase, you’ll decide not just who goes first for the turn, but how many preemptive orders players can issue. Be sure to check back soon for the upcoming preview of the Command phase, and pre-order the Dust Warfare: Core Rulebook, which will be available later this month.

offers players intense and engaging tabletop miniatures combat set in an alternate 1940s reality in which World War II continues to rage, fueled by the introduction of alien technology and the development of fearsome combat walkers.